5 things you didn’t know about Silly Putty

Yahoo.com ^ | 04/25/2012 | Mike Smith

[Silentgypsy]

Cracking open its egg-shaped packaging, exploring its bizarre, mushy properties, and inevitably leaving it on top of the heater and letting it melt all over the carpet, playing with Silly Putty is a rite of passage for every child.

But there's an impressive amount of history, chemistry, and trivia behind these odd, polymer nuggets -- and a few surprising facts.

It was a war-time accident.

World War II, in fact.

[Silentgypsy]

Article includes recipe for made-at-home silly-putty-type product.

[ClearCase_guy]

One of the few things that does not taste like chicken.

[ken5050]

I’d rather have a Slinky

[JRandomFreeper]

I was always fascinated by oobleck.

/johnny

[gunsequalfreedom]

One of the few things that does not taste like chicken.

I love a good sense of humour. Good one.

[Bullish]

I really don’t remember it being that much fun to play with. Kinda’ boring after only a couple minutes.

[mylife]

Now that newspapers and the funny pages are hollow shells, silly putty has lost a lot of its luster.

It was cool to pick up images and “photoshop” them with silly putty

[gunsequalfreedom]

I really don’t remember it being that much fun to play with. Kinda’ boring after only a couple minutes.

That's just because you did not pretend it was food and then feed it to your little baby brother!

[Red_Devil 232]

It is still available and still sold? Who knew?

[mylife]

BTW my friends wife Dr. Carolyn Sumners, Made quite a good living selecting toys for space shuttle crews to conduct serious physics experiments with in space.

She selected stuff based on physics.
They had fun while they made notes on experiments.

Ohh...Silly Putty in Space...

[sockmonkey]

It was cool to pick up images and “photoshop” them with silly putty

That was probably my favorite thing to do with Silly Putty. That, and stretch it out thin, and then "snap" it. Loved that sound.

[Bullish]

That's just because you did not pretend it was food and then feed it to your little baby brother

HEY!!! I WAS the little baby brother.

[unkus]

I really don’t remember it being that much fun to play with. Kinda’ boring after only a couple minutes.

---

That’s just because you did not pretend it was food and then feed it to your little baby brother!

---

LOL I did just that. I was about 6 and he was about 4. Two tastes was all he wanted.

[mylife]

Holy sh*t! I just read the article!

Carolyn probably put silly putty in space!

The objective was two fold.
To relieve boredom and to conduct legitimate experiments.

[dayglored]

This thread has potential, and not a ping in sight.

[mylife]

Silly putty was fun.
Everything was fun when I was a kid. ☺

[dayglored]

What does a pile of 250 POUNDS OF SILLY PUTTY look like? How does it act?

Answer here:

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2005/12/im-feeling-silly.html#!/2005/12/im-feeling-silly.html

Awesome pics and funny story.

[Doomonyou]

It’s tasteless gum that never loses it flavor.

[dayglored]

Whoa.

[mylife]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gLDyj4O31U

[right way right]

Pretty yucky when you got hair in it.

[norton]

I’d rather have a Slinky

Yeah, except that they make 'em out of plastic now and they don't work worth diddly.

[ThomasThomas]

“I really don’t remember it being that much fun to play with. Kinda’ boring after only a couple minutes.”

Did you try putting it on your little sister’s nose while she was napping and then tell here nose was getting big when she woke up?

[sockmonkey]

Everything was fun when I was a kid.

Now it's all labeled "known to cause cancer in the state of California". I also used to like to run behind the vapor clouds of the ddt trucks, and play with mercury..It was so slicky, slithery, amazing.

And no, we were supposed to go in the house when the ddt trucks cruised through the wherry housing, but what fun is that?

[mylife]

We used to make this stuff from gasoline and styrofoam that was like silly putty in some regards, but was highly flammable.

We called it “blob materiel”

No one was ever hurt, some eyebrows were singed...

[F15Eagle]

Maybe with a cartoon of Foghorn Leghorn..........

[21twelve]

“Yeah, except that they make ‘em out of plastic now and they don’t work worth diddly.”

LOL! That makes ANOTHER great punchline to the “slinkys are like liberals, pretty worthless but fun to push down the stairs once-in-awhile”.

[mylife]

That there is funny!

[Slings and Arrows]

The direct ancestor of Happy Fun Ball.

[mylife]

[KoRn]

"We used to make this stuff from gasoline and styrofoam that was like silly putty in some regards, but was highly flammable."

We put together something like that when we were kids. That damn stuff burned for something like 2 days! Water just seemed to make it mad. lol

[shibumi]

Let’s see.

Slinky or Silly Putty?

Silly Putty really doesn’t do much when you push it down the stairs.

Unlike Slinky.

And Liberals.

[mylife]

You are firmly in my camp of childhood and adulthood

[Daffynition]

The most unfair thing about life is the way it ends. I mean, life is tough. It takes up a lot of your time. What do you get at the end of it? A Death! What’s that, a bonus? I think the life cycle is all backwards. You should die first, get it out of the way. Then you live in an old age home. You get kicked out when you’re too young, you get a gold watch, you go to work. You work forty years until you’re young enough to enjoy your retirement. You do drugs, alcohol, you party, you get ready for high school. You go to grade school, you become a kid, you play, you have no responsibilities, you become a little baby, you go back into the womb, you spend your last nine months floating …and you finish off as an orgasm.” ― George Carlin

[Little Pig]

Steel slinkys are still available. You can find them on Amazon, at least.

[mylife]

Its a happy ending ☺

[jonrick46]

Wait until Silly-Putty gets enmeshed in your daughter’s hair. Next to impossible to get out.

[Bob]

I’d rather have a Slinky

You know, there's a lot in common between a liberal and a slinky -- they're not much good for anything but they sure are fun to watch when you push them down the stairs. :=)

[Slings and Arrows]

We told you not to taunt Happy Fun Ball.

[Slings and Arrows]

Napalm, please.

[mylife]

Seriously!

[dalereed]

Never seen it, what is sily putty?

[Hardraade]

I used to play with mercury too. Wouldn’t last too long, though - it tended to disappear in the cracks in the floor.

And we used to have a high old time using the long school break to blow up fish with quarter dynamite sticks :).

[oyez]

Hey,what I did with my high school chemistry back in my day would get me labeled a terrorist by today's standard.

[mylife]

Iodine and ammonia come to mind

[oyez]

Fun with a super cooled liquid which was replaced by beer in college.

[Daffynition]

[a fool in paradise]

The last valuable use of print media.

I want this for the new balloting system if we are going to only have silly candidates.

[Daffynition]

**there’s a lot in common between a liberal and a slinky — they’re not much good for anything but they sure are fun to watch when you push them down the stairs.**

It’s almost Zen-like: “Only when you can be extremely pliable and soft can you be extremely hard and strong.”
~ Zen proverb

[Boogieman]

Ha. What you called “blob materiel” is also known as napalm!